53 Bonfire Carnage

Darkscale was quite interested in the fact that the Fire Earth warrior had almost immediately recovered from the shock of seeing a talking snake. His intuition told him that there was something else to the matter.

He sized up the man, a big human with large shoulders and a squared face. The serpent's violet eyes met with the human's dark ones, each studying the other.

Darkscale could tell that the human was afraid. He could tell it from his eyes, he could smell it from his scent. The serpent could feel the fear and he could tell that human felt intimidated by him. However, between those mixed emotions, there wasn't any shock or surprise.

"Speak" commanded the snake, approaching the kneeling man. His tone was one that didn't admit any refusal. He was already deciding what to cut if the prisoner kept refusing to cooperate, when out of the blue, the latter cracked.

"I know, I know! Please stop!" begged the man that until that moment was pretending to know nothing. Darkscale immediately sensed something wrong about the sudden breaking down of the man: this was someone who endured Star Leaf's vicious torture without giving up any detail. Yet now, with a simple menace, he caused such a man to completely give up? Only a fool would believe such a bizarre story. There was more to the story. There was something that he didn't know.

"They're not here, only great devil" murmured the terrified man. He pointed towards the direction of the Yellow Lake. "They went to the lake" he revealed.

"Oh, that's nice to know... however why would I believe you?" asked the snake, with a dangerous glint in his eyes and a terrifying killing intent emerging from his bloody body.

He felt that the sudden change of heart of the captured sentry was very suspicious. Maybe he was trying to lead him to a trap of some sort?

" I would never lie to a great devil please believe me!" begged the man. Darkscale was quite surprised: he couldn't feel any attempt to deceive him coming from the wounded guard. The Fire Earth warrior seemed to be genuinely scared by his presence, or he was an incredible actor.

"Upsy, I forget to tell you something D" said in that moment Star Leaf laughing from her sitting place. She moved a lock of emerald hair from her forehead with a hand, then pointed at the territory where the other Fire Earth marauders were having fun loudly.

"They truly have two cultivators, but one-" she started explaining.

"One of the two cultivators is a snake" interrupted her the black serpent, with a flash of silver light passing through his eyes. He didn't even stop to listen to her admission. He knew that he was right. The human didn't seem much surprised when he saw him for the first time, but at the same time, he was deferent and incredibly scared of him.

The only reason why something like that could happen was if he already saw someone like him and he already had been put in his place by this mysterious figure.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, annoyed. His voice wasn't angry, but it was colder than usual. He hated it when people played games with him like that.

"I wasn't sure before now." revealed the girl, with a simple smile. "The spies that we have in their mists say that they have two cultivators: a woman and a snake, but I didn't quite believe them before now" she explained shrugging.

Darkscale didn't argue with the woman, he was used to her duplicitous ways. She never actually lied to him, but many times she tried to keep information from him. Not only on important thing, even on completely meaningless matters. It was almost a drogue, a compulsion that the girl had. She seems to have fun tricking people.

"Oh well, now that we are sure about it, we can take these losers out and wait for them here" said the green-haired beauty standing up. "We need a plan! We could use him as bait to separate the Charcoals and make the battle more easy for us. What do you think?" she asked with a hand on her chin, moving next to the enslaved Fire Earth man.

"You should have told me" responded the black snake, with a very indifferent voice. Then before waiting for her to say anything else, he moved like a lighting and used his tail to slam the Fire Earth scout on the ground. The power of the attack was so high that the skull of the man was completely crushed into mush with a single blow.

Blood and grey matter splattered all around, covering the nearby girl. She screamed with disdain, not being able to evade the sudden splatter of human juice.

"Darkscale!" she exclaimed, her eyes filled with fury.

"You really should have told me" said simply the snake, giving her a large grin before speeding like a living black arrow toward the people under the burning tower.

The youth stamped her feet on the ground in frustration, crushing even more the already unrecognizable poor Fire Earth guard. She was furious but also recognized that it was her fault for having tricked the snake.

"Dammit, you could talk to me like a normal being, there was no need to break my stuff and spray me with all this disgusting stuff" she murmured trying to get rid of the pieces of grey matter on her clothes. However, there were too many of them.

Finally, she sighed and gave up on trying to clean herself. The girl smiled, she wasn't actually that mad at the reaction of the snake. In fact, she found it amusing.

'You got me this time, but I will get you back' she internally promised to herself. Then the girl started to move towards the large bonfire, not willing to let Darkscale had all the fun. She knew that he was hoping that she felt too much offended by his behavior and didn't join him right away. Why? because he was having fun obviously!

"You're too much greedy, my dear" she said, darting forward.

The snake had already reached the Fire Earth people and was truly having a blessed time: there were plenty of humans that he could freely kill. It didn't matter much to him that nobody could actually defend themselves from his attacks. He was basically bullying the weakling to death but he didn't feel like there was anything wrong with that.

He didn't make a distinction between slaves and owners, conquered or victors. He attacked everyone and soon the whole region around the giant burning tower was filled with pools of smashed bloody corpses and decapitated heads embedded in the dirt.

"D, try to leave someone alive for the Ghost Pond!" he suddenly heard a message brought to him by a weave of silver energy.

The serpent completely ignored the message: and kept massacring people left and right. At this point, there were very few people that tried to fight him. Most of the people that were still alive instead tried only to flee from that bloody hell that he created.

The stench of blood became soon more strong of that of the burning wood. After a half hour of work, the only living things in the be Star Leaf, Darkscale and a small group of ebony skinned women that Star Leaf had captured. The woman was now applying a Slave Market Seal on each one of them.

Noting the grim look of the serpent drenched in blood, the woman warned him to stay away from them. "Don't you dare kill this one too, D! I need new servants!" she admonished.

The snake gave them a long look, making the Black Elk people tremble in fear but then rolled his eyes and darted away towards a huge mass of bloody cadavers.

Using the Pretorian's Breath and the Heavenly Battleground Technique in conjunction with the bloody terrain that he just created, he managed to absorb a great deal of Blood and Ghost Energy.